


Half-Spent Was the Night

by ladymelodrama



Series: La Nuit Venait [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Bear Island, Deleted Scene, F/M, Fluff, La Nuit Venait, Northern Lights, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-17
Updated: 2019-11-17
Packaged: 2021-02-07 22:10:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21465343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladymelodrama/pseuds/ladymelodrama
Summary: Winter on Bear Island has its charms. Deleted Scene from "La Nuit Venait."
Relationships: Jorah Mormont/Daenerys Targaryen
Series: La Nuit Venait [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1547308
Comments: 20
Kudos: 33





	Half-Spent Was the Night

**Author's Note:**

> A fragment of this story was an honest-to-goodness deleted scene from “La Nuit Venait”…but in the main fic I decided that Jorah would show Dany the sea caves instead so scrapped this idea. 
> 
> But then salzrand’s pretty Jorleesi-beneath-the-stars drawing (*HEART EYES*) and a Twitter conversation with her and ToasTea revived it. And winter has decided to come early for me (it was -1F at my house when I woke up this morning) so I’m all up in my Bear Island Winter feels anyway. 
> 
> I’ve reworked the timing on the original scene – now set after Jeorgianna was born but before the Epilogue. Just some Bear Island in the winter magic. Mmmm. Enjoy, darlings!
> 
> #FluffySunday :)

Silver, grey and white. These were the colors of Bear Island in deep midwinter, when it was all cinder skies and high snow drifts and weeks of waiting for the sun to reappear. Even the evergreens were locked in grey and white, as their branches were heavy with recent snowfall and their grey, mottled trunks were encased in silver ice from branch to root.

There was nothing but silver, grey and white. 

_And blue_…, Daenerys would concede, seeing her favorite shade every time she picked Jeorgianna up from her cradle, watching the baby’s eyes light up at the familiar sound of her voice, or later, in the night hours, as she made love to her husband by firelight, her hands tracing the contours of his face, searching Jorah’s eyes for feelings too deep to be expressed in fickle words.

Yes, there was a little blue to be found on Bear Island. And she was pleased by where she found it.

But there were no vibrant reds or violets. No spring greens or summer yellows. All the mountain flowers were buried under feet of snow. The songbirds with the most striking plumage had flown south before the first storms, down to the Reach and the sandy shores of Dorne to wait out the long winter. 

On clear mornings, there would be a few hints of sunrise—a pale orange-blush that faded too fast, greying under the clouds that soon gathered, the sun shivering under a haze, unwilling to look upon the icy landscape for too long before dipping southward again. Even Lyanna’s preferred colors—all those muddy browns and shaggy blacks were few, as the bears were all sleeping.

Like Drogon, curled up and hibernating away in his cave by the seashore.

Daenerys didn’t mind the lack of color. She truly didn’t. She was content. In a way that she hadn’t been in a long time. Not since she was still a child and lived in that house in Braavos with the lemon tree and the red door. And so much had happened. She had come so close to losing everything she ever loved that she wouldn’t dare ask for more than she’d been given. 

Never again.

But one grey afternoon, as yet another heavy snowfall blew in white sheets over the Island, sprinkling over it like powdered sugar on a cake, Daenerys stood at the window of the Great Hall with her arms crossed over her chest. 

And as the hours of sunlight over the week had spanned a few hours and no more, Daenerys found herself muttering to Jorah, with a little trepidation and just a hint of sorrow, “I’m afraid I’ll forget what any color but grey looks like.”

### 

Later, he remembered.

“_Khaleesi_,” he whispered, kissing her cheek with a soft touch. Perhaps too soft. 

He was attempting to wake Daenerys without waking the baby, who was finally sleeping through the nights soundly, after months of fussing through the midnight hours with her cries.

Daenerys was sleeping as soundly as their daughter. As was everyone else in the Mormont Keep. It was the middle of the night, in the darkest days of the season. The storm had passed and there was no wind to speak of. The halls were hushed, with only the occasional crackle of fire disturbing the dead silence of winter.

But Jorah wasn’t asleep. He was propped up on his side of their bed, outside the quilts, fully dressed, attempting to wake his wife from whatever dreams she currently found herself in. He hoped they were warm ones, with the sun on her tanned face and a pleasant sea breeze stirring the strands of her hair. He hoped she dreamed of the colors she missed so much. And for a minute, he nearly thought better of waking her at all.

He tried again, running his first finger down the length of her nose, gently, tracing her profile down past her lips, her chin and throat, into the hollow space above her collarbone. He repeated the motion, and was rewarded when her hand emerged from the cocoon of blankets and quilts to swat him away like a fly. He grinned, catching her hand with his own. 

She didn’t open her eyes but she inhaled deeply, slowly waking.

“Jorah?” she mumbled, yawning. She blinked once, but her eyes were heavy with sleep and didn’t want to stay open. Especially since their bedchamber was still dark, with not even that grey light of dawn to be found anywhere. Just darkness and the muted glow of firelight from the hearth. She asked sleepily, “What time is it?”

“Very late,” he answered her softly, before amending, “Or very early.”

She blinked again, suddenly becoming more alert, recognizing that he was fully dressed. She dug her elbows against the mattress, half-rising, her gaze drawn towards Jeorgianna’s cradle at the other end of the bedchamber immediately, worried something dire had happened to make him wake her.  


But nothing seemed amiss. The baby was sleeping. All was quiet and still. The fire in the hearth gleamed, having been stoked by Jorah recently, with strong flames that kept away the chill of the winter’s night. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” he assured her, in his usual soft tones, leaning over and kissing her forehead to seal the promise. He said, “But I want to show you something, so get dressed. And dress warmly.”

“Jeorgianna…?”

“Let her sleep. We aren’t going far.”

### 

He led her up the snowy hillside behind the Keep, to the top of those high waterfalls that once crashed into the sea below, before they were all iced over and went as silent as the rest of the countryside. 

The sky above was a vast, black canvas, dotted with silver stars. The crunch of their footsteps echoed as the air was so sharp and the night so clear. Daenerys wondered where all those familiar cinder clouds had run off to. Cowards, she thought, hiding away in the night while no one was watching. 

The snow wasn’t as deep on the hillside as in the valley below, where the drifts had blown up against the palisade wall, nearly breaching the wooden rafters. Still, Daenerys watched her steps carefully and gathered the hem of her skirt and long coat up with one hand, using the other for balance and choosing her steps deliberately, not wanting to slip on the snow and ice.

Jorah took her care for struggle, reaching out his hand to help her climb the hill. 

“If you’re tired, we can go back?” he mentioned, his concern for her suddenly taking precedence over his barely-repressed excitement at whatever marvel he wished to show her. If he thought she’d turn back now, after he’d dragged her out in the snowy wilds of the Island… 

She nearly laughed at him, but she was still groggy and didn’t want to waste the energy. But she did pause on the hillside for a moment, giving him _that_ look. The one that had brought cities to heel and men to their knees before her. She rarely used that look these days, unless she was sparring with Lyanna, which happened less and less frequently, as Jeorgianna’s birth had strengthened the tenuous bond of bears and dragons in a way that would prove unbreakable. 

It was his own fault for waking her up in the middle of the night.

“I flew on the back of a dragon in the skies above Winterfell while you slogged with the dead below,” she reminded him pointedly. “I survived the Red Waste with you. I outran the greatest storm in history with you. And I bore you a child, Jorah, right down there, in the halls of your forefathers, while another storm attempted to take you away from me forever.” She huffed, her breath ghostly white against the night air, “I think I can manage to climb a snowy hillside.”

“No doubt, my lady,” he replied smartly, properly chastised. But she caught sight of his proud grin under the chilled starlight, and it warmed her heart from the inside out. She caught her breath and continued climbing, grateful for his steadying hand, despite her speech.

And when they reached the flat of the hill, Jorah led her just a little farther, out of the pines and into the meadowland, where the snow blanketed the open field for half a mile or more, all sloping gently, its views of the dark sea to the south unobscured by the sparse tree line, its view of the night sky to the north unparalleled.

Especially on a crisp, clear winter’s night like this one.

“Oh!” Daenerys exclaimed, with surprise, as her eyes saw it immediately. The reason he had dragged her out of bed and into the wilderness became apparent at once. For the sky…

Oh, the _sky_…

The entire sky was lit up like it was on _fire_. Like flames of wildfire, though she’d never seen it used, tinged with every other color she could fathom. Greens and reds, blues and violets. It all shimmered together, dancing in solid bands that flowed across the sky like water, but sparked like flames. Slowly unfurling, moving like waves over the horizon. A dance. The lights were dancing in the expanse of the sky. 

Daenerys took a few steps forward, her neck bent upwards, her eyes wide. She couldn’t speak. She had never seen anything like it in her life. Neither red comet, nor silver-blue moon, nor any golden Star of the Morning could compare. The entire northern hemisphere, a cathedral dome in which she was no larger than a dust speck, was lit up by a hundred thousand lights, dancing. All dancing.

It was beautiful. It was glorious. 

“What…?” she couldn’t manage the question, unsure of what she was seeing. “And how…?” 

Jorah’s grin only broadened. He had surprised her. _Good_. That was his intention. He had caught a glimpse of the lights earlier in the night and guessed a spectacular show might await them. And he knew how she missed the colors of spring and summer. 

“I don’t know,” he admitted to her, coming around behind her and wrapping his arms around her waist, keeping her warm as they watched. She accepted his embrace with no argument, sliding her own fur-clad arms over his, settling back against the warmth that radiated from his tall, broad frame. 

He murmured at her ear, “The maesters say it’s some magic in the air that happens when the sun fails to visit the northern skies for too long. The fishwives say it’s the gods painting the heavens because they’ve grown tired of winter white. But it’s pretty, isn’t it?”

“It’s…breathtaking,” Daenerys breathed, unable to tear her eyes away from the spectacle in the sky. 

The lights filled the northern half of the celestial dome. There were _so_ many colors, she didn’t know all their names. She wondered if Jorah would know, that intense green-blue that smoothed into lime before flickering back to a robin’s egg blue. A shock of red above the line of green. A spray of violet that bloomed up like a wave crashing over a river of red. And they moved and flickered and bled into each other, creating more shades with every fold and shimmer. 

“I’ve been all over the world,” Jorah mused to her. “But I’ve never seen anything like it anywhere else. When I was a boy, I’d come up here in the middle of the night and watch until morning, wondering if I’d ever find anything as beautiful.”

“Did you?” Daenerys wondered, thinking he was speaking of skies and foreign landscapes.

“Aye, but only just,” he teased, tightening his grip on her waist just a little, his meaning clear. She felt a little smile steal over her cold lips and she turned her head slightly, to brush the top of her hood against his bearded chin, affectionately. She felt him push back the hood of her cloak with his glove to press a brief kiss against her hair.

She relaxed, sinking back against her husband’s chest, content and warm, despite the cold night. She continued to take in the sight above her with awe, her eyes fixated by it. Bear Island would never cease to amaze her. No wonder Jorah longed for home all those years ago. His home was not like any other.

_Our home_, she reminded herself, with another smile, happy with the thought. 

Someday they would bring Jeorgianna up here to watch the lights. The idea that her daughter would grow up under skies that could manage such brilliance and majesty filled her with joy. 

Jorah and Daenerys stood in the meadowland and watched until the dance of lights was spent, the glory of the night sky whispering away to its edges before disappearing into black mist, leaving behind a scattering of silver stars.

**Author's Note:**

> Oh, and if you’re a fan of the Northern Lights (I mean, who isn’t?), ToasTea will likely be serving us up a little pretty sky action in the near future as well because #GreatMinds 
> 
> <3


End file.
